The Diplomacy of Theodore Brown and the Nigeria-Biafra Civil War. Keith A. Dye
to that of the British; U.S. officials ultimately hoped the latter and the Organization of African Unity (OAU) would assume lead roles in the matter and absolve them of difficult negotiations.14
Two brief but important considerations deserve mention here that help underscore the point of this book. First, the Nigeria-Biafra episode enabled the ANLCA to observe attempts by the United States and Great Britain to attach remnants of a colonial empire to an apparently fragile ←8 | 9→Nigerian political landscape. A noticeable British presence in Nigerian political affairs especially in the northern region, and some configuration of the country’s economy for fit into the commonwealth, were paramount outsider influences. The result was an impasse in mediations when Nigerian and Biafran leaders began to distrust U.S. and British negotiators, as both outside nations operated to secure their respective interests. Chapters two and three provide a fuller account of this.
So contentious had this become that it seems reasonable to wonder if the disputants were unintentionally maneuvering for the participation of a neutral third party, one having an historically non-colonial stake in the matter. The issue, though, was that U.S. and British negotiators represented powers whose extensive global interests likely complicated as much as benefited proposed compromises. This paradox can be read in the increasingly worried correspondence between and among the State Department, the president’s office and other governmental agencies such as the National Security Council (NSC) and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). These detail how Nigerian and Biafran desires threatened to undermine U.S. interests. President Lyndon Johnson would decide that deference to British views on the crisis was the more prudent approach, rather than seek the commanding position in negotiations. U.S. engagement with Nigeria, trying though it was, became an alignment subordinate to a fragmented and grasping British hegemon. That the U. S. government posture during this phase of the conflict seemed more attributable to the wrangling for empire primarily between Great Britain and the Soviet Union (not to discount France), with the United States as potential inheritor for the west in a transitory colonial world, offers an equally valuable perspective to sharpen our focus on Nigeria’s civil descent and the reactions of the United States. Official U.S. government involvement in wartime Nigeria was a mutual recognition between it and Great Britain of a commonwealth status proscribed for the former colony, in a last throw for British Empire. The ANLCA would become first-hand observers of this dynamic when they joined the closed-door mediation process.15
Second, African American activism became bolder, more radical in proportion to dissolution of the British Empire. Post-World War II African liberation movements undertook more aggressive campaigns ←9 | 10→for freedom once cracks in European domination widened. As a result, African American desires for closer connections with Africa were commensurately inspired, though such forms could vary. This is a point needing further exploration in addition to its mention in these pages. Brief scholarly notice of the ANLCA role in Nigeria-Biafra either lightly credits the group with having distinguished between forms of activism appropriate for different circumstances or present it as the docile twin to the rising worldly militancy of a new generation of African American freedom activists. Works specifically mentioning the ANLCA by Herschelle Challenor, F. Chidozie Ogene, and Carl P. Watts label the group elitist and insist it was constricted, with an outdated program increasingly overshadowed by the surging Black Power movement. These critiques generally conclude that the ANLCA was stillborn and ineffective. A contrary point has to be raised. Addressing the problems of a new post-colonial African nation may have required a different strategy by interested African Americans than recommending mass mobilization at every turn. The ANLCA chose a brokerage approach to resolving the conflict, a means more conducive to what was underway—negotiations—and in the midst of a political crisis in Nigeria unfamiliar to most African Americans. This approach represented a new attitude toward African matters by a segment of African Americans who were radical in their own right as the empire system flitted about looking for new forms of control. The course of events that involved African American activism in the 1960s would seem to have included the ANLCA as a topic deserving qualitative attention.16
Several recent works, however, have broached the subject with more attention to details that at least tempt further exploration into the argument. Brenda Gayle Plummer’s In Search of Power: African Americans in the Era of Decolonization, 1956–1974 expands upon the theme of an African American agency when decolonization spread continentally, but most significantly, as participants having melded that process and its aftermath with freedom objectives in the United States. Her attention to ANLCA activism offers more than a glimpse into the need to reconsider U.S., African American, and African intersections in the decolonization era.
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Plummer ascribes a measure of viability to the ANLCA, whose venture into African American—African relations was a bond of liberation for the two peoples, one that did not require approval from the historically more Africa-minded black nationalist community. Plummer also argues that the Kennedy receptiveness toward ANLCA goals was in play only when absent a Cold War filter. More pressure group than confrontational, the ANLCA, notes Plummer, persisted with its charge despite the more attention-grabbing headlines of the March on Washington, violence against African Americans in Alabama, and the Kennedy assassination, all in 1963. The book’s accolades for and criticisms of the ANLCA entice readers to wonder if perhaps an expanded treatment of the ANLCA would have pointed to the group’s maturity from inception through the war stage, as I argue in these pages. On this point Plummer draws attention to the rapid pace of change in the African American freedom movement, a condition that seemed to imprint a constant need for revision of strategies and tactics upon activist formations. Because she did not give full attention to this aspect of the ANLCA, however, it is understandable why Plummer considers the ANLCA to have been an unsuccessful operation, rather than suggest it was a trial-run opportunity in a highly volatile period in world affairs (the arena the ANLCA chose to engage). This may also explain why her perceptive monograph does not mention any ANLCA projects during its short life.17 Negotiating a Destiny differs from Plummer on at least two points. First, it suggests that the rapidity of change in that era suffocated activist organizations having fixed positions and stiff organizational formats. Longevity and a rigid program were the reverse of how groups had begun to function. And second, therefore, Negotiating a Destiny suggests that organizational success for that era would be better measured by recognizing projects that had limited and short-term objectives. SNCC and the Black Panther Party, among others, with their voter registrations drives and free food program, were examples.
Though devoting less space to the subject than Plummer, Proudly We Can Be Africans: Black Americans and Africa, 1935–1961 briefly turns our attention to the importance of the ANLCA. Author James H. Meriwether, like Plummer, inserts the organization into the stream of African American attention to African affairs, believing the group ←11 | 12→had an assertiveness similar to that of black nationalists. He credits the ANLCA with having a determination for its objectives in the face of more attention-grabbing issues, such as demonstrations for voting rights and quality education. Meriwether describes the ANLCA as a “new chapter” in African and African American relations. Granted, he covers African American affairs with Africa only from 1957 to 1961, a brevity that obviously prevented further exploration into the subject. This was not a bar to his insightful observation that the logic of the ANLCA rested upon the transition of anti-colonial African American activism to a post-colonial pan-Africanism. Proudly insists that this dynamic compelled astute Africa watchers to acknowledge “the difficult complexities of an independent Africa.” This is his strong point, one providing a better understanding of the full value of the ANLCA. Noteworthy in his and Plummer’s works is the ANLCA struggle for survival, both financially and structurally.18 My work, however, considers the “new chapter” label more applicable to the ANLCA-Nigerian-Biafran episode that distinguished it from other Africa-focused formations.
A chapter contributed